Interview: George Lopez and Carlos PenaVega of “Spare Parts”

Posted on January 22, 2015 at 3:50 pm

Spare Parts is based on the true story of four undocumented high school students who entered a robotics competition and beat the team from MIT. I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk to George Lopez, who produced the film and stars as a character based on the two teachers who worked with the boys, and Carlos PenaVega of Big Time Rush, who plays Oscar, the most serious-minded and responsible member of the team.

PenaVega talked about how much fun the actors who played the team had with the robot built for the film. “It’s kind of like movie magic because we show up, the robots are built and then we get to play. But they let us drive them around a bit so I kind of get to be like a pilot for a day.” He is ebullient and talkative, not much like the character he played, who he described as “an incredible human being. He and I spoke through emails for a while but he was very vague and we got to finally meet on set, they came for a whole week, all the boys both teachers. And I think each one of us took time to just sit down with them, talk to them it’s like tell me your story out of your mouth, no more like online. I mean these kids went through so much and Oscar is such a strong human being especially for someone who speaks very little English, or who speaks but still has an accent. He just so inspiring because we all have obstacles in our lives. In my opinion he had some of the most difficult obstacles and he got through it. He can do it, so can we.” He was especially happy when his wife, Alexa PenaVega (“Spy Kids”) was cast as his character’s girlfriend. “It was such a blessing because we had just gotten engaged and being apart for two, three months would have been difficult. And she was amazing and you know just having George and my wife and Jamie Lee Curtis and Marisa, it was such good company and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.” He was grateful for the three pieces of advice he got from Jamie Lee Curtis. “Always be on time, which I’m working on. Always know your lines. And number three never ask anybody to do something that you could do for yourself. Like if there is a glass of water over there and you can clearly get it, don’t be like, ‘Can you get me this?'” To relax between scenes, the cast enjoyed singing show tunes and other songs.

He was very glad to get away from the buzz cut hairstyle his character has in the film. “Continuity is a big thing in films so they would give me a buzz cut every day. Every single day. You know what, in the first month it was great but in the next months, I was like ‘no more, no more haircuts.'”

Lopez gave the young actors some advice as well. Before shooting began, he took them to dinner and told them “to work hard and let’s make something that the kids could be proud of. That everybody would be proud of. ” He was paying tribute not only to the characters in the story but to his own teachers who inspired and supported him. “I had it when I was growing up and I had teachers that would talk to me kind of take me under their arm and stuff and tell me things I wanted to hear. And sometimes the things I did not want to hear and did not understand at that particular time but then I did later on.”

Lopez was eager to talk about why the story was so important to him. “The fact that you could beat so many great universities with spending under $800 and how intelligence has no color. And ingenuity and determination and will can outweigh what somebody might learn in a book. They were relentless and they would not give up. The only reason they entered against the colleges was because they thought they didn’t want to lose to another high school. They didn’t go into win; they went to not lose to all the high schools. So that’s inspiring and it is a little bit of a kind of a thing that Latinos have, like you always feel a little bit uncomfortable even when you’re welcome. So hopefully this movie will be able to show people. The movie is entertaining but it also shows Latinos that whatever they aspire to be can happen.” He said it was the first movie he produced that had “such an incredible and credible cast. Having Jamie Lee Curtis do the movie and have her be so great in it but also to get Marisa Tomei in there and Esai Morales — I called him personally and asked him to be in it. And then finding these young men who were amazing actors and who also felt the story so it wasn’t really just another job for them. They felt the responsibility to do this movie and to make sure it was done properly. To honor the actual young man who we became quite friendly with.”

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Interview: Meredith Anne Bull of “Strange Magic”

Posted on January 21, 2015 at 3:57 pm

Bog King (voice of Alan Cumming), Griselda (voice of Maya Rudolph) and Marianne (voice of Evan Rachel Wood) are part of a colorful cast of goblins, elves, fairies and imps in "Strange Magic," a madcap fairy tale musical inspired by “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Released by Touchstone Pictures, “Strange Magic” is in theaters Jan. 23, 2015. Strange Magic © & TM 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved. — Bog King (voice of Alan Cumming), Griselda (voice of Maya Rudolph) and Marianne (voice of Evan Rachel Wood) in “Strange Magic.” Strange Magic © & TM 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Meredith Anne Bull stars in this week’s release “Strange Magic,” an animated musical fairy tale based on a story by George Lucas. She plays Dawn the “young, naive, unaffected and thrilled with life” younger sister of the heroine, Marianne, played by Evan Rachel Wood. She has done voice-over work before, but this was her first time as the voice of a feature film animated character. She says she felt very comfortable working in a recording studio, which is a challenge for some actors who don’t have a musical background. But it was a challenge to create a performance alone in a recording booth, “without the other actors around you to interact with. Sometimes the director will feed you lines and sometimes you are out there on your own and you have to pull from your imagination.” She did get to see some of the movie’s visuals, especially more recently. She began working on the film in 2011, before most of the animation work had been completed. And the storyline changed over the year. But in the last year she got to see some short clips and had a better idea of what the final version would be like. She says her favorite fairy tales are “Red Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks,” which she thinks is “hilarious.”

Bull told me she originally auditioned for the part of Marianne, singing “Thriller” and “Like a Virgin.” They asked her to read for Dawn, though she says it is Marianne who is more like her in real life, more independent, with more of a dark sense of humor. “But they saw some part of Dawn in me. They’re more to her than being irresponsible and flying off the handle. She’s sensitive, and she really cares about her sister. Sometimes she can be self-centered, and she lets her sister down at one point, but you see how much she cares about what her sister thinks of her. She’s not just happy all the time, though that is certainly her go-to emotion.”

The movie has an assortment of contemporary songs, including a duet with Elijah Kelley, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” “They’re not like the typical Prince Charming and Princess. She’s like three feet taller than he is!”

She says the best piece of advice she ever got was from Kelley, who told her not to be intimidated, no matter who she was working with. “This was kind of my first big film. I was not exactly intimidated but a little squirrely to be around these people who are very established. Elijah talked to me about not being intimidated — we are all people, we all have families, we all have insecurities and disappointments. You should never let anyone make you feel less than you are.”

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Debbie Reynolds on Movie Addict Headquarters

Posted on January 20, 2015 at 12:08 pm

Debbie Reynolds, who will receive a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award at the SAG Awards this Sunday, appeared on Movie Addict Headquarters to talk about her career in the Golden Age of Hollywood with Betty Jo Tucker. Be sure to tune in. And this is a good chance to watch or rewatch some of her classic films, including Singin in the Rain, “The Catered Affair,” “Divorce American Style,” and “Mother.”

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Actors

Tribute: Rod Taylor

Posted on January 9, 2015 at 9:02 am

Today we mourn the loss of the Australian actor Rod Taylor, star of classic films including The Time Machine and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. He was an affable leading man with the confident physicality of an athlete, comfortable in light comedy, drama, and military settings.

In an interview with TV Guide, Taylor described his early years:

My first big fight was with my mother when I was a kid back in Sydney. She was a writer and wanted me to be an artist. My father began as a rigger on a crane and finally ran his own construction crew. … Anyway, when I was a kid, I dutifully went to the Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College. Then I worked at commercial illustration for newspapers, and my mother was happy. But I did a lot of boxing and I was captain of an Australian surf club. I met a lot of actors there, and I got the bug. I gave up art and became an actor myself, in Australian radio. Mom put up quite a struggle over that — but lost.

He was hired for an American movie filming in Australia, “Long John Silver,” and decided to give Hollywood a try. He told TV Guide:

I did well as an actor in Australia, and then Paramount invited me over … to have a look at me. Hal Wallis took that look, and maybe he was expecting Gregory Peck or something, because he said, “Who is this bum with the broken nose?” … So I told him to stuff it and lived on the beach for a while, catching fish for my food.

After small parts in some films, including “Giant” and “Separate Tables,” and an appearance on “The Twilight Zone” as an astronaut, he had his first movie lead role in the George Pal version of the H.G. Wells classic about time travel, The Time Machine.

After “The Birds,” he appeared in frothy romantic comedies like “Sunday in New York” (with Jane Fonda) and “Do Not Disturb” (with Doris Day).

He was the voice of Pongo, the daddy dog, in “101 Dalmatians.”

He also appeared in one of my favorite guilty pleasure films, the soapy stuck-in-an-airport saga The VIPs, with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Orson Welles. Taylor plays an executive who will lose his business if he cannot get to a crucial meeting, when his flight is cancelled. His devoted secretary is played by Maggie Smith, who also co-starred with him in “Young Cassidy.”